


Blood Magic

by lwise2019



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 08:27:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27348115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lwise2019/pseuds/lwise2019
Summary: What do you do if the medic is wounded?To fit this into canon, there would need to be a couple of days between the acid trolls and the night of the lake cows.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 12





	1. Medic

_A medic should not engage in combat because …_

_Because …_

_Because … he might be hurt and then he can't help others._

_They're shouting. So many shouts._

_But they're not shouting “medic”._

_So it's okay._

The darkness takes him.


	2. "I can"

Emil pulled off his glove, lifted the right hand in his own trembling hand, felt for the pulse. Even the man's wrists were heavily muscled! But there, the pulse was there, strong and regular. “He's alive …”

Sigrun joined him, kneeling on the other side of the limp body which lay half-curled on its left side at the base of the tree. Taking a deep breath, her expression stony, she pushed the man over onto his back, turned his head to his right. Emil opened his mouth to object, closed it, understood the ruthless logic of a troll-hunter. _If moving him will kill him, then he is already dead and just hasn't stopped breathing yet._

Mikkel was still breathing.

Pulling off her right glove, her own hand absolutely steady, Sigrun carefully felt through the blood-soaked hair. “I don't feel any kind of break. He's just unconscious.” Gently brushing a lock of hair away from the wounded man's closed eyes, she left a smear of blood in a bushy eyebrow. The light rain began to wash it away.

Emil looked up at the blood on the trunk where Mikkel's head had struck when he was thrown aside by the giant; he shuddered. “There's so much blood …”

“Head wounds always bleed like mad,” she answered absently, looking around at Lalli, alert and watchful, and Reynir, climbing down from the safety of a tree with the cat riding on his head. “If only it was someone else. The big guy could … could carry any of us.” The slight hitch in her voice was her only evidence of distress. “But for us to carry him —”

“If he's only unconscious, can't we wait? Just a little while?”

“We don't know how long he'll be out. Maybe minutes — maybe hours —” She stopped, but Emil heard the rest. _Maybe days. Maybe forever._ “We can't wait here,” she went on. “That fight will attract others.”

“We'll make a travois. Lalli and me, we can make one. Reynir can drag it.”

“Yeah.” Her stony face softened just a little in relief, then hardened again. “But — Emil —” He knew it was bad. She never called him by name. “You must understand. If we have to run, we'll have to leave him. And we can't leave him alive.”

“Sigrun, I — I _can't_ …” He was cast back to a terrible time in a ruined house in Silent Denmark.

“No, you can't. But I can.” She didn't look at him, stood and pointed at Reynir. “Freckles! Get over here!” To Emil, “Get to work. I'll guard the … the helpless ones.” 

Scrambling to his feet, Emil looked at her just for a moment in horror.

_“You can't. But I can.” Has she done this before? Cut someone's throat? Stabbed him in the heart? Had to run and couldn't leave an unconscious comrade alive for the grosslings?_

_I don't want to be a troll-hunter. I don't want to be here. I want to be home in Sweden, blowing up buildings._

There was no help for it. He had to go on.

Gesturing to Lalli to follow him into the woods, Emil told him “Travois. Remember 'travois'?” and set to work looking for good straight branches. Whether he understood the word or realized what they were doing from Emil's actions, the Finn quickly found the necessary objects and after not too long, they were back, dragging their prizes.

“Tell the scout to find us shelter. And water. We need those _fast.”_

Emil nodded, passed on the word in his halting Finnish, hoped he hadn't said anything stupid. Lalli nodded without a word, turned and ran. They needed rope, and the rope was in Mikkel's pack, discarded when he rushed to help the others battle the giant. Uncomfortable at pawing through the injured man's gear, nevertheless Emil fished out the rope, inadvertently pulling other things out along with it.

Rope in hand, Emil hurried to the pile of branches, looked around for assistance. Reynir, he saw with disgust, had dipped his little finger in Mikkel's blood and was drawing on the man's face with it. “Reynir! Stop that — that —! Stop that! Get over here and help me!”

The Icelander didn't understand the words, but the tone and gestures were clear. Looking uncertainly at his blood-stained finger and then reluctantly wiping it on his jacket, he ran to Emil's side and clumsily held branches while the Swede tied them together. The travois completed, the two men half-carried, half-dragged Mikkel onto it and tied him in place.

They had just secured their patient when Sigrun darted through the bushes and into the forest. Leaping to his feet, Emil drew his dagger and pushed Reynir towards the tree he'd climbed when the giant attacked. “Get up there, idiot! If it gets past her —” But no, there she was returning, cleaning her dagger on some leaves.

“Get moving,” she ordered. “There'll be more coming.”

Emil loaded Mikkel's backpack and the other gear on top of the unconscious man, picked up the two ropes tied to the front of the travois, hesitated, tossed one to Reynir and slung the other over his own shoulder. The two men began dragging the primitive vehicle together.

“What are you doing? We need you free to fight!”

“If we're attacked, I'll drop the rope and join you. Until then, we'll make better time with me helping than with just him pulling.”

Sigrun looked around at the woods, so quiet and yet so menacing, then nodded. “Okay, move!”

They moved.


	3. Rear Guard

Lalli rejoined them after they'd gone about a hundred meters. “How far?” Emil asked in Swedish, the Finnish escaping him at the moment.

“Two kilometers.” The Finn held up two fingers so that even the Icelander could probably work out what he meant. Emil and Reynir looked at each other, sighed identically, leaned against the weight, and went on. The Swede had discovered that, although the principle of the travois was the same, dragging a man of Mikkel's size through mud and across wet grass in the rain was an undertaking very different from dragging a man of Lalli's size across snow and ice. 

_He's keeping up well. I guess being a shepherd isn't all lying around on hillsides playing the panpipes._ Despite his exposure to Reynir's family, Emil's idea of the life of a shepherd was still largely shaped by myths and fairy tales told to him by his nanny, Sofia. _I have to admit he's doing better than I am. Well, I have to admit it to **myself**. Not to him!_

“You're rear guard,” Sigrun informed a panting, sweating Emil after about a kilometer.

“Huh? No, you're the better fighter. _Much_ better fighter.” She'd already backtracked once to deal with something following them.

“True, but both of us tired can fight better than me fresh and you exhausted. Get back there.”

“Maybe we can just let Reynir pull him alone. That was the plan —”

“Not a very good plan. It's hard enough for two. Get back there. We need to get going.” She took the rope from him, put it over her own shoulder, nodded at Reynir. They pulled, and Emil fell in behind them, feeling like he was walking on air with the weight lifted off him.

Following behind the travois, Emil was scanning all around but couldn't avoid occasionally glancing at Mikkel's face. Unconscious, his habitual impassivity lost, he looked much younger than usual. Emil had come to think of the older man as his father's age, but no, Mikkel was just in his early thirties. He should be too young to die.

In the age of the Rash, no one was too young to die.


	4. Blood Magic

Reynir was staggering and even Sigrun was flagging by the time they reached the shelter Lalli had found. They had passed two ruins, and at each they had started to turn, prevented by Lalli stepping in their way and pointing firmly ahead. This shelter was worth it, however: the roof nearly intact, a working fireplace, windows covered with shutters and thus mostly unbroken, and a stream chuckling past offering clean water. It did have a raised porch, and Sigrun and Emil had to carry Mikkel up and in, which was almost more than they could manage, but the shelter was as defensible and comfortable as anything they were likely to find.

Emil built a fire, Reynir broke out the cooking gear and began preparing their supper, Sigrun cleaned and bandaged their medic's head, checking him over for other injuries. “I think he's got a broken rib, maybe two. Otherwise he seems …” She ran out of words, and Emil nodded his understanding. “Okay, uh, you take first watch, the twig takes second, I'll take third, and in the morning we'll … I'll decide what to do.”

Declining any supper and laying out her bedroll across the room from Mikkel, she curled up and, if she did not fall asleep immediately, she did an excellent imitation of it.

When Emil, after a quiet watch in the continuing rain, came in to wake Lalli to take over, he found Reynir kneeling to Mikkel's left, once more drawing on his face, though this time with a charred twig. In the firelight, he could see a circular rune on each cheek and another on the man's forehead, several more on the new bandage.

“What are you _doing?”_ the Swede demanded. Hearing the frustration in his voice, Reynir looked up and explained, gesturing at the runes and then upwards. As he finished, they looked at each other in mutual incomprehension and Emil turned away, laying out his own bedroll to Mikkel's right. If the man awoke in the night, Emil would be there.

Emil was dozing, not quite asleep, and Reynir was sitting cross-legged beside their patient, watching him worriedly, when Sigrun went out to take her watch and Lalli returned. The Finn strode over to the three men and regarded them thoughtfully for a long moment.

Crouching at Mikkel's head, Lalli fished around the Dane's collar, coming up with a length of rough leather which he pulled out slowly, finally revealing a pendant, a little stone hammer, which he carefully did not touch. Awake now, Emil sat up to look at what he was doing. “So, a pendant? So what?” He started to reach for the pendant, pull it further into the light, when Lalli blocked his hand.

“No! No! Is … ah … is magic.” Emil frowned. Like Mikkel, he was a skeptic who'd been forced by experience to believe in magic, but the idea that the Dane might be wearing a thing of magic … well, that made no sense.

Lalli frowned down at the pendant for several seconds then, decisively, brought up his dagger and sliced the heel of his left hand, allowing the blood to drip onto the pendant.

“Uh, wait! You — that —” Emil was completely at a loss.

The Finn pursed his lips, still gazing at the pendant, then turned to Emil. “Hand!” he demanded.

“You want my … hand? You're going to — you want to use _my_ blood?”

“Hand!”

The Swede held out his left hand, winced at the expected pain as the other sliced it slightly and held it to drip over the pendant.

Reynir tapped Lalli on the shoulder, holding out his own left hand, waving it for attention. Looking at the pendant again, still unsatisfied by whatever he saw — or didn't see — Lalli nodded, took the Icelander's hand, sliced it and dripped more blood on the pendant. Nothing appeared to happen.

“You know,” Emil said finally, “when he wakes up, he's going to be really unhappy about the mess you've made of his shirt. If … if he does wake up.” Suddenly the remark didn't seem very amusing and it was just as well that neither of the others understood it.

For want of a better idea, all three sat back to watch the unconscious man dreaming in the firelight.

“Okay,” Lalli said after several minutes. The other two looked over at him. That was one word they all shared. A quick slice to his right hand and, taking Emil's bleeding left hand, he pushed it onto Mikkel's right shoulder, likewise pressing Reynir's hand to Mikkel's left shoulder. Holding down the hands of the other two, he murmured something in Finnish; there was a chanting quality to it that made Emil believe that the mage was casting a spell.

Emil looked around, seeing the four of them joined in a circle sealed with blood, wondering what Lalli expected to happen and whether there was anything he could do to help. Mikkel seemed unchanged. Emil's gaze fell upon his own left hand and his eyes widened.

There were small blue flames playing upon his hand and upon Lalli's right hand where it pressed his hand against Mikkel's shoulder; looking up, he saw similar flames on Reynir's hand and Lalli's other hand. Even as he watched, about to speak, the flames were spreading across Mikkel's chest, growing larger … the flames reached the pendant and burst into a blue inferno that completely engulfed the Dane.

“What are you doing? Stop it! Stop it!” Emil tried to pull away, but Lalli's steely grip held him fast and the Finn's quiet voice didn't falter. Emil looked up; Lalli's face was intent and Reynir's face was awed. How could they see the man burning up and not be horrified?

Except … he looked at himself, his left arm in the flames halfway to the elbow. It wasn't harming him and so, perhaps, it wasn't harming Mikkel either. Across the man's body, he saw the Icelander had picked up his charred stick again and was drawing something on the worn floorboards.

After a few minutes the flames died down, Lalli fell silent and sat back wearily, releasing the other two. Emil examined his left hand, which was totally unburned but smeared with both his own blood and Lalli's and … he blinked, rubbed the palm of his hand on his trousers to clean it. The cut was healed, only a faint scar remaining. Looking over at Reynir, he saw the other had discovered the same thing. Both looked at Mikkel with eyes full of sudden hope.

The big Dane was unchanged.

Emil looked over at Lalli, who appeared drained and sorrowful. The Finn looked back, shook his head. “No other,” he said in his heavily accented Swedish, and the Swede understood him to mean that there was no more he could do.

“Yeah,” Emil answered heavily. “Okay.”

Reynir rose to gather his canteen, which Lalli had refilled from the stream, a rag, and another charred stick. Returning and cleaning his prior runes off Mikkel's face and the bandage with the dampened rag, he drew more, referring frequently to the one he had drawn on the floorboards.

Emil watched all this with silent despair.


	5. The Rune

The runes hadn't worked. They'd been washed away by the rain, and maybe healing runes shouldn't be drawn in blood anyway. Mikkel had told him that “the gods love blood”, but the instructor at mage training had looked at him like he was crazy when he asked about runes in blood. Still, if blood worked, surely Mikkel's _own_ blood would be the best. Reynir shuddered, thinking of the feel of it, the smell of it. The idea had made sense at the time, but he never wanted to do it again.

He should have used the proper ink for healing runes, except he didn't have any. The ink required water gathered from a pure spring by the light of the full moon, but they'd been past the full moon when he learned that, and he hadn't had a chance to gather any since. Not that he had any idea where to find a pure spring in Finland anyway.

If you didn't have proper ink, you did what you could. A charred birch twig would do, and he had one ready for when Emil left; he felt he had to wait since the Swede had been bothered by seeing Reynir draw runes on Mikkel's face. Reynir couldn't understand the other three, but then Lalli couldn't understand the others either, so there was some pantomime and repeated words which Reynir had come to recognize. Emil would have first watch, then Lalli, then Sigrun. Reynir was never assigned a watch; only Mikkel had ever trusted him that far, and then only because the man had been exhausted. He tried not to be hurt by this.

Sigrun had declined supper, though Reynir thought he'd done a good job cooking it, had laid out her bedroll across the room, and had immediately curled up to sleep. Reynir frowned at the sight, for he'd thought she and Mikkel were close and getting closer, a development of which he approved, sensing a loneliness in both of them which he hoped would be relieved by their relationship. He didn't understand why she would not want to be close to the man at this terrible time.

Lalli had laid out his bedroll out of the way, as usual, and had fallen asleep immediately, again as usual, while Emil had left to stand guard. 

Effectively alone, Reynir looked down at the unconscious medic. _I should have talked to him about medic training. I should have asked more questions. He did answer, mostly, if he wasn't too busy. But then — I don't think Mikkel could fix this. I don't think any medic could. It has to be magic. I wish I'd been allowed to have military mage training. Surely if I'd gotten that, I'd know what to do now. But there's no point wishing; somehow, somehow, I've got to **make** the magic I do know work._

Considering the runes he'd learned, looking over his patient's face, at length he took his charred twig and began a rune directly on the bandage which Sigrun had wrapped around the wounded man's head. _No, that doesn't feel right._ Rubbing away the marks, he sat back to meditate on the correct rune.

By the time Emil returned, Reynir had come up with runes that he thought — felt — would be beneficial against a head injury and was just putting the final touches on the last couple. Emil woke Lalli, who promptly left to take up his watch, then stalked over to stand over Reynir and ask a question in a frustrated tone.

“Look,” Reynir answered, “these runes here are very close to some healing runes that I learned in the summer course, but I've added these embellishments — see here? and there? — that should tie the effect more closely to the head. And that one, well, it should, I hope, get him some, um, extra help.” He gestured upwards quickly, not wanting to invoke the gods and perhaps anger them.

Emil stared at him in complete incomprehension and Reynir gazed back with a similar expression. For all he actually knew, Emil might have asked why he was using a charred stick instead of his own blood. But he'd done his best to answer, and that was all he could do.

Still frustrated, the Swede shrugged, turned away, and laid out his bedroll by Mikkel's side. Reynir hadn't laid out his own bedroll; he meant to watch over the injured man all night. He threw another log on the fire, gathered a few additional charred birch twigs, then settled himself cross-legged and prepared for his vigil.

Hours later, Sigrun rose and left without looking over at the others, and Lalli returned. After regarding the other three men thoughtfully, he crouched by Mikkel's head and fished around the Dane's collar, coming up with a length of rough leather. To Reynir's surprise, as he slowly drew the string out, a faint glow under Mikkel's shirt, which the Icelander had taken to be a trick of the light, moved with it. The source of the glow proved to be a pendant, a little stone hammer. _Where would a skeptic like Mikkel have gotten such a thing? It's clearly magical; does he know it? If not, why does he wear it?_ But of course there were no answers to his questions.

Curious and now fully awake, Emil reached for the pendant, but Lalli blocked his hand, saying something incomprehensible. Emil frowned as Reynir nodded silently. A thing of magic like that was nothing to be messed with, and even Lalli himself was wary of touching it.

The hammer glowed a shimmering silver in which he could almost see greens and reds, but it seemed to have no effect on the unconscious man. Reynir looked up at Lalli's face, which was closed and thoughtful. After a moment, Lalli drew his dagger and in a swift movement sliced the heel of his left hand, allowing blood to drip onto the hammer.

Reynir watched intently. Mikkel had told him that the gods love blood, and this pendant was certainly connected to the gods, far more so than his runes. Perhaps blood magic would work on it.

The hammer's glow intensified but … but nothing else happened. Lalli's mouth tightened; he turned to Emil and demanded his hand; the Swede was startled, almost resistant, but extended it. Another quick slice, more blood, and the hammer glowed more strongly.

But it still wasn't _doing_ anything! Reynir could have screamed in frustration. How could they make it _help?_

If it wanted blood, well, he had some too. He tapped Lalli on the shoulder, waved his left hand for attention. The Finn, who was beginning to look frustrated himself, nodded curtly, raised his dagger. Reynir's blood made the hammer glow even more fiercely, and the three sat back, watching, hopeful. Emil muttered something, but the other two didn't understand and apparently it didn't matter anyway.

After several minutes in which the hammer shimmered and glowed without any other effect, Lalli broke the silence. “Okay.” It was one word all of their languages shared, and Reynir looked at him hopefully. If the runes didn't work, and the hammer wouldn't help them, maybe the Finnish mage could work some of his own magic.

Lalli switched his dagger to his left hand, sliced the heel of his right hand, took the bleeding left hands of the other two and pushed them down onto Mikkel's shoulders. The Icelander felt a jolt as their hands, joined by blood, touched the unconscious man, and the hammer flared for a moment as if in welcome. Lalli began to chant, and the hammer pulsed with the rhythm of his words.

Reynir's runes began to glow. His lips parted in awe as he saw more runes appear on his hand, Lalli's hands, Emil's hand. But these were not the runes he'd drawn; they were new. He leaned forward, trying to study them, trying to remember them. The runes were growing, spreading, and when one touched the pendant …

There was a silent explosion, and Mikkel was surrounded, covered, by a vast glowing rune. Across his body, Emil was crying out, trying to pull away, but Reynir disregarded that. The rune! He had to remember this rune!

The charred stick was still beside him. Hastily wiping the grimy floorboards, ignoring a splinter that jabbed his hand, he began to draw the rune. Every line, every twist … he had to get it right!

He had made two copies of the rune when it faded and Lalli sat back, silent, exhausted. The hammer's glow was dimmed; it glimmered like a banked coal. Reynir studied Mikkel's face. Surely, surely, that had to have worked! But the man's face was peaceful, unconscious, and his chest rose and fell in the same slow, steady rhythm as it had since he'd been struck down. Reynir felt like sobbing. He and Lalli had done everything they knew and still —!

Emil was looking at his hand in astonishment, prompting Reynir to look at his own. He was not terribly surprised to find it healed. Had Lalli's healing spell backfired, and just healed the three of them? It couldn't be! It just couldn't!

Lalli turned away, pulled his bedroll over near Mikkel's head, curled up and was instantly asleep. Emil shifted, clearly meaning to sleep as well. Reynir could not sleep yet; there was still one thing he could do. Fetching his canteen, full of clean water from the stream outside, and one of Mikkel's cleaning rags that had fallen from his backpack, he wiped away the runes he had drawn before, wishing as he did that Mikkel would growl at him, annoyed at his impertinence.

Reynir drew the rune he'd seen as carefully as he could on every accessible part of Mikkel's face, and all the way around the bandage. It was all he could do, and when he finished, he laid out his bedroll beside the stricken man, and fell asleep.


	6. Night Watch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very angsty, thoughts of suicide and euthanasia.

Sigrun wanted to cry, to scream, to break things, to run into a swarm of grosslings and fight until she fell. She wanted to do _anything_ but what she would do in the morning.

She prowled around the cabin, the cat riding on her shoulders. The stupid cat was asleep, of course. She'd wake if a grossling got near; Sigrun had faith in that, but it was still annoying that the creature could sleep when everything was so _wrong._

The grosslings were closing in. She could _feel_ them in her own way, hear them in the sounds of the forest, the insect calls, the hooting of owls. They were out there, and moving in.

> He only came to this wretched place because he wanted — needed, somehow — to take the little forest mage to his nutso cousin. I'll go on, I'll carry out his task, and I'll protect the other two, take them home, and then …
> 
> And then there'll be a swarm of grosslings somewhere, there has to be. There always is. I'll go honorably to Valhalla. _He_ will be there, surely. Surely the gods understand that he fell in battle with the giant. His body still breathes, but Mikkel, my — my Mikkel — is already dead. What I have to do in the morning is just … just making it official.
> 
> I have to do it. The grosslings are coming. I can't make a stand and go down fighting, because the boys would die too, and he loved those boys. We'll have to run, and we can't run fast enough dragging him on that contraption. It exhausted Freckles and — be honest — it just about exhausted me and Emil dragging him two kilometers. We have to leave him. _I_ have to leave him.
> 
> I've never left a man before.
> 
> I have to protect the boys to the end. I have to carry out his task.
> 
> I have to do it.

The insect sounds had changed again. She was already moving, dagger ready, when the cat woke and pointed towards the grossling. The battle was brief and she was already turning, looking for another.

Her watch was far too short and there were far too few enemies.


	7. Morning comes

The three young men were asleep around Mikkel when Sigrun came in from standing watch. She stood silent, watching, for several minutes before clearing her throat. “Everybody up,” she ordered. “It's cloudy and raining harder, and that means the grosslings will be out. They're closing in on us. I've killed several of them already. We've got to keep moving _fast_.”

“Mikkel —” Emil began.

“Shut up,” Sigrun commanded harshly, and Emil did. She had never used that tone with him before. “Get out, all of you.” When no one moved, “Out! Now!”

“No!” Emil answered, the only one of the three who could communicate with her. “Lalli did something to him last night. We can wake him up, I'm sure of it. Please! Lalli did something!”

Sigrun stared at him, stony-faced once more, finally nodded. “All right. You can try. But we can't wait for long. You know that.”

“I know.” He turned away from her, shook Mikkel's shoulder. “Wake up! Wake up, Mikkel!” Had the man's breathing changed? Perhaps he was waking … He _had_ to wake up! “Soldier!” Emil shouted suddenly in a fair imitation of a parade-ground voice. “On your feet, soldier!” The wounded man twitched, moved his legs. “It's your watch! You're neglecting your _duty!”_ He roared the last word and Mikkel winced, rolled away, pushed himself halfway to a sitting position before collapsing.

Lalli was on his feet, backing away, and Reynir was scooting away on his backside, the cat in his arms. Both remained watching intently, hope written on their faces.

Sigrun was instantly beside him, raising Mikkel to sit up leaning on her. “Okay, Goldy, you did good. You — Big guy, wake up. We've got to get moving.” He stirred, raised his head, groaned. She appeared to be blinking away tears, but if she was, no hint of it leaked into her voice. “Come on, come on, wake up. You're — you're just being lazy now. On your feet!” Mikkel struggled drowsily to get his feet under him as Sigrun pulled his right arm over her shoulder and dragged him up. Emil, on his other side, put an arm around his waist and helped her lift the big Dane.

Mikkel groaned again. He looked both miserable and slightly absurd with runes drawn in charcoal on every accessible part of his face.

“Yeah, that's my opinion too,” Sigrun agreed.

He looked at her through pain-slitted eyes. “What —? Where —?”

“That giant threw you into a tree. You've been out since yesterday afternoon. It's morning now,” she added as he looked around vaguely. “This is a shelter the little mage guy found. Can you stand?”

He hesitated, started to nod, closed his eyes in renewed pain. “Call'f nature,” he slurred.

“The boys can deal with that. Freckles! Get over here!” She pointed her free hand at Reynir, who put down the cat, leapt to his feet, and hurried to her side. Ducking out from under Mikkel's arm and pushing the Icelander into position, she glanced over at Emil.

“We'll help him. Come on, Mikkel, we don't have a latrine dug but there are some bushes.” Half-carrying him, they got him to a private location and, on his mumbled assurance that he could manage alone, Emil pulled Reynir away and left Mikkel to take care of business. When he staggered around the bushes afterwards, he offered no resistance to their taking his arms and supporting him back to the ruin.

He stopped, frowning, as he saw the travois and looked around slowly. “Don't 'member. How … here?”

“We brought you here,” Emil explained. “That travois —”

“ _Brought_ here?” Outrage seemed to clear his head somewhat. “If, if, attacked —”

“If we'd been attacked —” Emil paused. He didn't want to repeat what Sigrun had said.

Sigrun herself stood at the top of the stairs. “We _weren't_ attacked, big guy, and there's no point arguing about it now. We weren't going to leave you behind yesterday. And we're not leaving you behind now, but we need to get out of here. Can you walk with just Braidy helping you?”

“I — Sigrun, risk —”

“Oh, shut up, Mikkel. The boys won't leave you now even if I order them to. Even if _you_ order them to. Don't argue with me. Now, can you walk with just him helping?”

“I — yes, I, I can.” Even in the minutes they had argued, he'd begun to stand up straighter, lean less on his supporters, speak more clearly. The magic was still at work.

“Good. Goldy, go get his backpack and split the stuff among all our backpacks. He can't carry it —” Mikkel started to object and she overrode him “— he can't carry it _right now_ , and we need to _go.”_

Emil ran to take care of the gear. When Mikkel was fully recovered, he would tell the man about the magic that Lalli had worked, and about Reynir's runes, but for now, it was enough that they were all together, and that they would be moving again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In real life, Mikkel would never recover this fast and he'd probably have permanent effects. But hey, that's what magic is all about.


End file.
